Couple of interesting passages here. One on shame, from Megan McArdle…
Like many people who have been writing on the Internet for a long time, I find that the minute you make human contact with someone, they often get rather sheepish and apologetic about the terrible things they’ve said. A polite note written back to an intemperate diatribe, or an in-person encounter, often elicits sheepish apologies that all run along the same lines: They weren’t really thinking of you as a person much like them, whose back aches in the evening and who worries about the price of breakfast cereal, but as a sort of cartoon figure of great and malevolent influence.
…and one on social media, from Terry Teachout (H/T: @MZHemingway)
By the time I started writing regularly for the national media, I’d long since learned that there are things you simply don’t say in public, many of which would be innocuous in a better-regulated world but are nonetheless far more controversial than they really ought to be. In addition, I started blogging in 2003, three years before Twitter came along and sufficiently ahead of the curve to permit me to fully internalize the inescapable but easily forgotten fact that you own everything you post on the social media, now and forevermore.
Couple thoughts on that, in order. First off, like Megan I too have encountered the phenomenon where a person can somehow take the online position that you and your family should all die in a grease fire, while at the same time be a person who is perfectly civil to your face. Note that I didn’t use the term ‘in real life’ for the second example there, though. That’s because online is real life. I don’t really care if the person who just threatened me will never actually go through with that threat; I want him or her to stop making threats. In other words: if you’re going to be horrible, at least be consistent about it.
While we’re on the subject of people being wretches in the service of their ideology, there’s something that I’ve been meaning to point out. While controversies and problems may in fact have more than one successful solution to them, and while those solutions may be mutually exclusive, and while those solutions may be tied up in one or more philosophical and/or ideological worldview… it does not follow, then, that one ideology or philosophy is just as good as another. Sometimes people are simply wrong about things – and because they’re wrong, they’re also failures*. Screaming wildly at people is usually seen as being diagnostic of being a failure.
But I digress. Although Terry Teachout’s point needs less commentary on my part: if you haven’t figured out by now that social media is forever, do your cause a favor right away and get off of social media. Heck, get off of social media anyway. Most people honestly don’t really know how to do it properly. And if you’re in politics, trust me: you really should measure twice and cut once when you’re doing social media activities. Or, again, not cut at all…
Moe Lane (crosspost)
*This is, by the way, the major reason why you always strive to be as precise as possible when you’re insulting someone. It’s easy to justify the argument that, say, the Black Bloc militant wing of the antiwar movement is made up of animate scum that talks and wears clothing, because the aforementioned animate scum delights in behaving precisely that badly at any opportunity, or none. Say it about Democrats in general, and it comes across as crazy talk: everybody knows a sensible and perfectly decent member of the Democratic party.
And that is why I try to keep most of what I say light. I fail, but I do have that as a goal. I criticize the idea, trying not to criticize the person; again, that is the goal. Otherwise all I get is an on-line fight, and that is an exercise in futility – “Never get in an argument where someone does not risk getting punched in the mouth.”
That, I think, provides a good brake on the tongue.
” everybody knows a sensible and perfectly decent member of the Democratic party.”
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Not me, I’m afraid. Maybe it’s just me, but of all the democrats I know, approximately 1/3 are venal, 1/3 are stupid, and 1/3 are some combination of BOTH. Approximately speaking, 0% know how wealth is created, or have any interest in learning. Again approximately speaking, 100% depend on ‘Uncle Sugar’ for not-insignificant contributions to their well being (with the same thirds applicable)
My wife’s family are all school teachers. Perfectly reasonable people one and all. Unfortunately they get their politics from the whatever public sector union newsletter they read, internalize this as Gospel Truth and don’t think about it any further. Nothing wrong with them as people, really, it’s just never occurred to them that there is any other viewpoint. You can’t convince them of anything else because their rule is that politics is a topic that is not discussed in polite company.
That’s not what I would call ‘sensible’, though, accepting a single pov without considering alternatives.
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In fairness to Moe’s point, I make it point to not know very many democrats.
17 years ago, that would have been an accurate statement.
But defending Clinton from impeachment when he had clearly permitted himself, 8 years of unbridled hatred of Bush, and another 6+ throwing a temper tantrum every time someone had the audacity to disagree with Obama has greatly thinned the ranks.
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Not only do I not know one,I don’t even know OF one.
there are some decent Democrats. sadly. most of them are dead and the ones remaining are soft-hearted people who came of age when FDR and Kennedy were the good guys and Nixon was the bad one. My mother is one of those. i just shrug and accept it.
I’m with you, Luke. What Clinton did in the 90’s, the hatred and contempt rained upon Bush, and then the 6+ years of regular Americans being treated as “enemies” – well that pretty much has brought me to a state of disbelief that there are any decent, law-abiding Democrats around who will ever believe in law and order, America, or that good should triumph over evil.
The union thuggery demonstrated against a sitting governor in Wisconsin, the DOJ’s blatant disregard of the law, the use of the IRS to target conservatives, the gleeful attack upon traditional Americans, the blank check that the LGBT people now have to threaten and destroy those who do not believe like them…well the list goes on and on.
That said, Moe is right about not saying things in social media that bring us down to their level – simply because it does no good and hurts our ‘souls’ vs theirs.
One last thought, in all of this it’s the media who I blame for what’s been gotten away with by the Democrats. The media, who is obviously infested with people who believe the end justifies the means. Fascists, communists, socialists without a conscience, whatever they are, they’re the cause of the breakdown of societal order and decency – because they don’t report the truth.
Re. your final paragraph: Damn straight.